" I would like to live in the same soil as my ancestors, and walk under their trees, and do what they did, and think their thoughts. " - Elizabeth Lawrence. After 4 decades in Sweet Home Chicago I moved to North Carolina where my first Irish ancestor landed in the early 1700's. I'm an artist, garden designer and grandma blogging about my life in this " Southern part of Heaven " as Chapel HIll is called.

Monday, June 25, 2012

My First Garden

As a grandmother I want to introduce my little Sweetpea Lea to gardening . When she comes to mawmaw's house she loves to touch the flowers and vegetables and watch the butterflies and bees. She's a picky eater when it comes to veggies as are many her age. I've heard young mothers say that french fries were the only food their toddler would eat. Of course things were so different in my generation.

Beginning at the age of 10 it was my duty, as well as my two sisters, to tend to the vegetable garden. Watching our food grow was a satisfying experience. We would plant green onions, cabbage, turnip greens, corn, peas, beans,sweet peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets, carrots, squash, strawberies and collard greens. We grew peanuts and corn in large quantities in a separate field , some to eat and some to sell . Anyone who has a large vegetable garden knows that its a lot of work to keep up.

I remember picking a ripe sweet pepper or tomato off the vine, rub it off on my shirt, putting it in a biscuit and eating it for a snack. We didn't use chemicals even back then and were organic before it became a trend .

As we girls had to prepare meals for our widowed Father and ourselves all the vegetables we grew went from garden to table . We ate very little red meat, if any, and raised our own chickens for both meat and eggs. We drank milk right from the cow . The only things we bought from a grocery store were flour , cornmeal and lard in bulk . We churned our own butter and made buttermilk as well. When the vegetables were ripe, the real work began and I can recall many summer days spent in harvesting and canning. It was a lot of work but a healthy lifestyle and to this day I still prefer vegetables to meat.

When I get my own house here in North Carolina I will make a little garden for my Lea so that she can learn how food is grown and perhaps come to love vegetables as much as I do. I was happy to read that there are many young families these days turning to organic farming as a business and one expert said that farming will be the next big thing. It's refreshing to see the renewed interest in vegetable gardening and it's my hope that more parents will introduce their children to it .

Well hello dear Eileen, so good to hear from you. Sorry to be late in replying, I've been away. Thanks so much for your kind words. I am just in limbo until I do get my own home and garden, as you may imagine.

Beautiful art and beautiful words as well! I credit my love to the outdoors, nature and gardening to my grandmothers and father. They were a big part in showing me how to plant a seed and watch it grow! I learned so much from them as a child. As if a sponge soaking up Mother Natures liquid. All this skipped my mom for some reason, Bless Her Heart. LOL, but now in her retirement years, she is really soaking up the surrounding beauty that my dad has planted.